Minister slams performance of assemblies

Koforidua, May 21, GNA – Mr Antwi-Boasiako Sekyere, Eastern Regional Minister, has expressed displeasure at the poor performance of the municipal and district chief executives in the region, as indicated by a monitoring and evaluation report.

‘Nobody is interested in sacking you, you only have to do the right thing to uplift the wellbeing of the people in your … areas,’ he said.

The Regional Minister said out of the 26 municipal and district assemblies in the Region, only eight have registered a net growth in their internal generated funds in 2014.

Mr Antwi-Boasiako was speaking at a two-day Municipal and District Monitoring Report Dissemination forum being attended by the 26 municipal and district chief executives as well as district coordinating directors, planning, budget and other management staff of the assemblies in Koforidua .

The report is replete with administrative inefficiencies such as poor supervision of staff, poor record keeping and management, failure to prepare reports and write minutes of general assembly meetings long after the event.

Another observation in the report also showed that, the assemblies failed to appraise their staff at the end of 2014 while some standard procurement procedures and contract management were sidestepped.

Mr Antwi-Boasiako said in the light of the level of investment and staff capacities in the assemblies, such avoidable infringement of the age old local governance procedures and processes must not be allowed.

He expressed wonder how the assemblies would measure staff contribution to the corporate goal of development when ‘you did not appraise them nor set performance target for them’?

This, he said was an indictment, which must be remedied without any delay.

The Regional Minister announced that, in view of the report, the Regional Coordinating Council would institute a league table and use the results to engage non-performing districts and errant districts would be sanctioned according to agreed principles.

The two-day forum which is ongoing would examine the challenges and observations found at the end of the monitoring and evaluation exercise and use the platform to share ideas and common practices that would move the respective district development agenda forward.